Chapter 13

Jimmy Jeong was, essentially, a nice, pleasant, good-natured kid. But he was also his father’s son, and as such, his views on right and wrong may have been slightly skewed.

The elder Jeong was not good-natured, nor was he all that nice. He owned one legitimate business, an upscale Korean restaurant, out of which he ran several not so legitimate businesses. In partnership with his two younger brothers who still resided in Seoul, Mr. Jeong imported and exported just about anything that would turn a profit. Anything.

Jimmy was, of course, too young to have any direct involvement in his father’s shady affairs, but he wasn’t too young to have already learned a great deal about how to conduct business in a way that pretty much guaranteed maximum benefit. Whether the business was ethical or even legal had never been the primary concern.

To safeguard and enhance his many and disparate business ventures, Mr. Jeong had lots of tools in his armamentarium to draw from, and among his favorites was simple extortion. It didn’t have to be applied brutally - just a little pressure here or a little arm-twisting there would usually move the needle enough in his favor to insure success. He considered it a relatively civilized form of manipulation.

Jimmy had seen his father apply that particular tool often enough that he truly saw it as just the cost of doing business. In this case, he knew he had something that somebody else would want to keep quiet, and it didn’t seem grossly improper for him to propose a trade. In exchange for the only video recording of all that under-age sex going on at the boathouse, Chief Joseph Lodge should be willing to pay out some cash. Not a lot; Jimmy didn’t want to appear greedy, but a couple hundred bucks or so seemed fair. That would keep him in snacks and graphic novels for the rest of summer camp.

He downloaded all his footage onto his laptop, cleaned it up with some careful editing, then loaded it onto a USB stick. He would delete it from his laptop when he and Chief Joseph Lodge agreed on a price.

Two days after the event, Jimmy knocked on Barb’s cabin door, and she opened it with a friendly greeting. “Oh, hi Jimmy. How are you today?”

“I’m fine, thank you Ma’am. And you?”

“I’m good. What can I do for you?”

“Um, I have a business deal I’d like to discuss with you, if you have the time.”

“Sure, I have a few minutes. Come on in.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

He stepped into the cabin and out of his shoes.

Barb parked on her bed and asked, “So, what kind of business deal are we talking about, Jimmy?”

He pulled the USB stick out of his pocked and showed it to her. “Well, the other night when Kenny and Sandy and those kids were at the boathouse doing that, uh, stuff, I was there too with my video equipment. I got some great footage of the whole thing from start to finish.”

Barb was intrigued. “Did you, really? How interesting.”

“Yeah, it was! Well anyhow, I thought you might want first shot at buying it from me before I offered it to a blogger I know. I’m pretty sure he’ll offer at least two hundred for it. I was just wondering if you might want to make a better offer.”

Barb showed no surprise, no emotion whatsoever as she said, “Now, that’s an interesting proposition, Jimmy. May I see that thumb drive?”

“Oh, sure, but, um, this isn’t the only copy.”

She held the little memory device between her thumb and forefinger, appearing to examine it closely for a few seconds, then she handed it back.

“Well, Jimmy,” she said with a feigned, melodramatic sigh, “I’m afraid you have nothing to offer here. This thumb drive is blank.”

Jimmy looked confused. “No, it isn’t. I loaded the footage on it just before I came over here.”

“Really? Hmm. Why don’t you plug it into my laptop and we’ll take a look, shall we?”

She stepped over to her desk and brought her computer to life. Jimmy plugged the stick into the USB port and waited for it to be recognized. To his shock and dismay, just as Barb said, when he clicked on the icon, it was blank, no files. Nada.

He looked suspiciously at the woman who now stood with her arms folded, regarding him with a look of disappointment.

Jimmy demanded, “Tell me how you did that!”

“Did what, Jimmy? Erase the material you were using to try to extort money from me?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because, like I said, it wasn’t the only copy.”

“Are you referring to the video file that used to be on your laptop? I’m afraid you’ll find that one has been erased as well. You’ve lost it all, Jimmy, and more importantly, you’ve also lost something far more valuable. You’ve lost our trust and our friendship. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a busy day ahead of me.”

Jimmy hurried toward the cabin to check his laptop. There was no way she could have done anything to his files, but he had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t making it up. There was something really weird about her.

Halfway back to the cabin, Jimmy Jeong suddenly felt very confused and disoriented, and he slowed to a stop. For a moment, he was overcome with a profound feeling of sadness. He felt like crying, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, understand why. Then, as quickly as the sadness overtook him, it was gone, replaced with an emptiness, a sense of ennui. He shoved his hands into his pockets and continued on. As he made his way back to the cabin, his hand closed on the thumb drive, and he pulled it from his pocket. He looked at it, wondering, “Why am I carrying this thing around?”

Jimmy had absolutely no memory of the boathouse event, or of meeting with Ms. Hellman only minutes ago.

As soon as the boys got back to the cabin after lunch, Kenny announced, “Okay, guys, you need to head on over to the stables and get your horses saddled up for this afternoon’s ride around the mountain with Mr. Garrison. Ziggy, Ramon, I know neither of you are equestrians at heart, so I have something else planned for just the three of us.”

“What?” Ziggy and Ramon asked at the same time.

“You’ll see when we get there. Let’s go.”

They took the lake path to the boathouse, where Ziggy helped Kenny lift a canoe from the top rack and lower it into the water.

“Grab those fishing rods and the tackle box, Ramon. We’re gonna paddle out to the island and try our luck from the pier.”

Ramon wasn’t all that enthusiastic. “We’re going fishing? Oh, woop-dee-doo!”

“Just do it!”

Ziggy at the bow of the canoe and Kenny at the rear paddled them out to the middle of the lake and the small, rocky island. They pulled the canoe up onto the shore and carried their gear out to the end of the wooden pier extending about twenty feet onto the lake.

As they attached lures to their fishing lines, Ramon grumbled, “I think I’d rather abuse my ass on a stinky old horse than sit out here all afternoon bored to death.”

“Ah,” Kenny laughed, “but this has real rewards. If we can haul in two or three trout, we’ll clean ‘em, build a fire and cook ‘em up on a spit. Nothing tastes better than fresh trout right out of the lake.”